Monday, June 15, 2009

Leave letter for a school girl from Obama

Read this – http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8090000/newsid_8098700/8098788.stm
Kennedy Corpus, 10, missed school to hear President Obama speak, and needed a note to explain her absence.
When Kennedy’s dad told Mr Obama about her day off while asking a question, the president offered to write a note.
If you are away from your school to attend an important event you are interested in, do you give a leave letter mentioning the real reason? Or say you weren’t doing well?
Well, in most cases we need to say a ‘lie’ since most schools do not encourage you to skip the classes to attend another ‘useful’ event!
If the chief guest offers a note for your absence from the schools how would you feel?
Has it happened to you?

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Short matches and big cup

The second Twenty20 World Cup matches have started yesterday.
England took on the Netherlands at Lord’s in London.
The matches are kicked off with 12 teams hoping to lift the World Cup on June 21.
Gone are the days when we watched test matches for 5 days with a day of break in between. If the matches happened during the holidays, we enjoyed packing our tiffin box, water bottle, towels like we do for a picnic and go to the stadium for watching the match! Remember there was no TV at that time.
Slowly, we settled down at home listening to the running commentary on the radio. Still there were the long test matches.
One day cricket came in suddenly. Less time was spent on watching matches as the TV had also come to exist by then.
And now with the world moving at a rapid speed, 20 overs are now here.
Most of you wouldn’t have seen the test matches.
But one day matches – yes!
And now what do you think about having these short matches? Are we giving the same importance for sports, fitness, the art of playing the game as we did before?
Is only the time a constraint? If not, what else made these sports get squeezed into five hours of playing from the five days matches?

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Does good spelling matter?

Kavya Shivshankar, an eighth grader living in Olethe, Kansas, effortlessly spelt the word Laodicean, which means indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion to become a Spelling Bee Champ.
This news flashed in every television and newspaper.
But in the days of short messaging, Internet chatting and Twittering do you think that good spelling matters?
At YOCee’s office we receive most of the mails in short forms. Of course, the reports by the student reporters are written with correct spellings.
The story in schools could be different.
Does your teacher accept short forms and bad spellings?
Is good spelling is cared for only by the English teacher? Other subject teachers do not bother much about the spellings?
Is it enough if the sentence conveys the message or the answer you want to write in your paper and do you think spellings should be given a go?
Tell us what do you think!